Category: Cats

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this…

The Alternative Advent: Day 8

bailey catsThe Secret Life of Bailey Cats—

There’s danger in the air…

When like vampire bats,
there’s tacit catsent
circumventing other cats’
nose for a scent—

And feline-combat
who’ve their bents made too fat,
Hell dis-management’s lent
dire rules supplemental:
cos unless you’ve not noticed
they’re all derangemental…

So it’s war for clan Bailey:
‘no fire fur first’
for engagement is lore—
before who comes out worst—
we’ll see three pick on one:
in a fight to the last paw…

The sound of discrete feet(s)
abound are coming
from somewhere(s) over there-
It’s Fritz: she sneaks around and sits;
I think sensing purring in the air.

Then a sound disturbs her.
Potts smells catburger.
and Jabber,
thinks he’ll have her,
to himself.

So by stealth on delft paws,
she beelines for the doors
between Jabber’s hind legs
and Pott’s jaws…

Sandwiched tippy-toes to mind her
she’ll be sure they’ll not find fur
to lead them;
cos they know
she’s frightened of claws.

Tri’s pounces were announcements,
she’d discredit then denounce them—
any cat who had motives
less emotive than hers.

No tit-for-tat, prattle-splat
at this or spat at that
or bric-a-brac
and cranny.

She’ll take a look
in every nook such are
snooks-a-cocked, uncannily.
Guggie’s slink was succinct
and instinctively trying.
her cruelty ensuredly unindemnifying.

So when she offered to nobble
Fritz’s mid-thorax bobble:
an offer as kind as maligned by design.
“Fluff?” Frtiz thought ought,
not be enough—
had Guggie
tried to “break me—
in half!”

She puffed
and waved away the axe—
and immediately.

Declined…

With revolt in her steps
you can bet that she crept
like a colt from the bolt
(e)scapegracely.

A prima facie evasion,
from oedemas and abrasions;
Fritz was not
in way, shape or form
porkholt.

Although Fritz found the chasing
at times too defacing
she was so gracefully pacey and
If I’d’ve seen her,
I would’ve timed her.
but that’s before she’d seen
gleaming
and sheaningly gleaned
the dreamcat
catkilling
machine:

Guggenheimer…

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens…

Abraham Lincoln

Home is any four walls that enclose the right person…

Which wouldn’t be me. As for Asbo—

Just the wrong kind of walls…

424980_10150708723606041_1819417037_nWere it not for the house-sitting I’ve been doing for my sister, I would no doubt have finished the few things I’ve been working on; I’d been looking forward to it too— but after spending most of today getting over yesterday; which was spent in much the same way as today; and then moving back: I’m in a full-blown phase-state. I’m sure you’ll all know a variance of it well: a lack of decent sleep leaving you feeling half-awake, physically drained and not too clever; have work in your head but getting to it requires the services of the part of your brain’s that’s already in bed.

This is what shifting houses can do to me, it can throw me out of whack, out of sleep and leave me rather worse for wear; and this is before factoring in Asbo the anti-social beast my sister calls a pet. I should ideally have come home during the day, sat at my table with my view, next to the kitchen and been irritated by my own cat: she’s allowed to do that, she’s a monster I can take all the credit for, but Asbo— though he’s a magnificent looking creature, he has an inherency to maim and strike fear into you. Physically, it’d be all too easy to describe him as low-maintenance because he’s either indoors sleeping or outside prowling— but that doesn’t take into account the time spent dressing the assorted wounds he inflicts as a matter of course. In deed, thirty seconds after arriving on Tuesday, I was bleeding from where my right calf used to be.

My sister thinks this is all wonderfully amusing, it’s just her way— she actually called me up to see how things were going and if she was surprised I was still able to answer the phone she hid it well. She said there was some chicken that Asbo and I could share if we wanted. I told her he hadn’t asked for any and of course, she felt the need to point out, he’s a cat, of course he hasn’t asked you… I told her I’d just eaten and’d left some for later— she said, Oh, you’d better check that…

“The little shit, he’s…”

“What’s he done?”   *snorting*

“He’s finished my sodding dinner!”

“What was it?”   *still snorting*

“Chicken… Don’t you dare!”

“So he did want some chicken…”

“&%$£%$!”

*click*

Neither my dinner, nor the cat was anywhere to be seen…

Anyway, the other side of physical side is the stressy side— the anxiety of letting him loose, which isn’t much worse than knowing I’m in the house alone with him. It’s just I like to know that if he wants back in, I’ll be ready; maybe in some deluded way hoping that he’ll return the favour by not mauling me every time he sees me.

So naturally the knock on effect isn’t much fun; I feel slow and far, far duller than is usually the case. I need a quiet evening with the doorbell unplugged and a decent night’s sleep, then hopefully, I’ll be able to finish some work.

A man is like a cat; chase him and he will run—

Sit still and ignore him and he’ll come purring at your feet…

Helen Rowland

The Art of Kitty Maintenance…

Such temperate palms doth pitter like rain—

Our misery is their entertainment…

I’ll forgo the usual introduction and instead reproduce a cartoon I found in the hope that it will at least seem to justify my labours as much to you, as it does to me. And of course, make them appear all the more sane: kitty maintainanceWith the exception of a few pursuits I could be pressed to lay a hand on without overly taxing myself, I can honestly say that owning a cat is one of the trickiest. The word itself: pursuit, perhaps sums up the very relationship we have with our feline friends better than any other. Let me assure you, I’m in no way making allusions to that sound they make when they’d like to make us think we are causing them botherations— I am deadly serious. The word pursuit is perfect; implies a chase— and more often than not, it is we who are doing the chasing.

I like to think they prefer it this way, because no matter which way you look at it, there is an inevitable run around that occurs from day to day which can leave you wondering where your next breath will come from. This is something cats consider beneath themselves, for they are animals which have indifference hard-wired into them; they are the same creatures which can sleep for three days then fall forty feet onto solid ground and land gracefully: panting therefore is something they gaze upon with a kind of indignation reserved for the owners of lesser pets. I’ve little doubt that in their minds, such behaviour would no doubt spoil their whole aesthetic. It inevitably comes down to the simple question: who owns whom? For it’s a simple truth that, as much as we would like to believe otherwise: it’s thems which does the owning— which unnaturally brings us full circle to the original point of pursuit…

Cats need to be tackled— something easier written than done, but there you have it. There is no other way of putting it: their outward gaze may be one of calm, knightly almost— but underneath beats an epicentre of cruelty and uncompromise. This is something I have noticed over the years and despite the odd exceptions— tackling gets you respect. It also allows you to retain a little dignity, once you realise any hope of clinging onto all of it is sadly unrealistic.

Cats operate on an entirely different biological clock you see, but this is all part of their tactic to confuse and befuddle their owners. They’re the peace-time equivalent of P.O.W.s wanting to get home by first irritating their captors. Autumn, since she is my case-study, has long since been banned from watching anything that might encourage behaviour of an overly irritating manner, because like many of her kind, she doesn’t need any.

She has just the three settings:

  • Sleep

  • Play

  • Eat

Sleep time for cats is a curious affair. They can be in a vegetative state for hours, be curled still and dreaming of catching sparrows and offering them as gifts— and still become alive at a moments notice to create havoc and make us cry. This is where they differ from us. We wake up and generally plod about and walk into things for a few minutes, whilst spending the next few hours trying to remember who we are.

It’s also the time they boast the ability to operate in all three states simultaneously. When they sleep they dream; when they dream, they are invariably thinking about food. When they want food they think it’s cute to get our attention; firstly by playing and then by making the most unremitting sound imaginable: some of them not dissimilar to a crying baby. This is where they differ from dogs, who haven’t the ability to produce more than a half dozen utterances; whereas cats have a resonating chamber granting the them powers of production over something in the region of a hundred-odd noises designed to register a frown, wake the dead or put you off whatever it was you were doing at any time of the day or night.

Luckily, cats will sleep on average, a full twenty hours a day— if for no other reason, so they can be fresh to disturb their ‘owners’ whenever they damn well please. When they are not however, they are hunting lap— and don’t be fooled into thinking it’s an act of love. Altruism and cats do not mix: it’s because your lap is warmer than the floor, or invariably the chair or bed it was sleeping on. You only have to ask yourself how many times you’ve left your chair only to return and find a cat’s curled up or contorted on it sporting a big grin as though born there… It’s all part of cats’ sleep time.

Play time is next, and there is only one lesson here to be learnt. Cats play when they want to play: Period… There are no exceptions. Autumn for instance barely moves. She does occasionally stretch and sigh; looks good doing it too; and though she’d never dream of doing the two simultaneously in case it affected her balance, she rarely plays. A couple of times a day though, usually at about the time she feels she deserves to be rewarded with food, she goes a little do-lally-tat. This is the only time she really ever shows herself up: as much as I worship her little paws, she is perhaps the most ungraceful creature alive. She’s got the art of lazing about and extending her little legs down to a tee; and looking beautiful goes without saying; but her landing, leaping, running and methods of evasion leave a lot to be desired.

So when she’s tear-assing up and down the stairs because a video tape has just tried to bite her; or she’s mistaken the central heating for something unfriendly— with that startled look of abject horror in her eyes: she flies— which is all the more remarkable because she’s a bit of a waddler at the best of time; speed her up and her back legs resemble those dwarfed-horses. But when she’s calmed down and realised there is nothing to fear from the crisp packet in the corner, she becomes far more sociable: at least this is what she’ll have you believe.

Being cute means give me attention, and it’s all part of their ‘not to be messed with’ policy. Yes— they play mind-games too. The spasming out they do is an ulterior act, made out for their own ‘peace of mind’— just to have you chase them around the house— and just to convince themselves they’re still the ones running the show. When on the face of it, it’s the only running they ever intend to do. This is one of the few times we are in accordance with them— why run, when we could be eating. And with hunger, comes the most familiar cry in the cats arsenal. It is easily the most disturbing:

Take me to your feeder

It’s as close a translation as I can manage but yes— it’s there to inform us that it’s time to eat: the final piece in the great triumvirate of the kitty universe. It’s also their favourite time of the day, and quite possibly the only time of day they truly make you feel as though all their love is a bit of a sham.

There’s little you can really do to null the emotional trauma they inflict upon us at feeding time, besides preparing a little; and the easiest way to do that, is to be your pet. As hard as it may be; when you hear the thud of a cats’ imperfect landing at three in the morning and wide awake, beckoning you for strokes and companionship to brace the outdoors— it’s best to turn the other cheek and instruct it back to bed…

Your success in this instance will be nil— and your cat will never tire of repeating herself. She will do her best to trip you up so you fall down the stairs and hurt yourself, and run away feigning fright at the tumultuous racket that ensues— but she’ll be back; just about the time you want to hit the sack again pretending she hadn’t just tried to kill you and that she really is your best friend.

She’ll wriggle about and purr and lick and yelp a little if she can be bothered, but deep down she’s thinking only one thing, and that is that ‘you’re an imbecile!’ And when she’s had enough and you’re just about ready to nod off on the downstairs carpet— she’ll hop onto all fours, give her head a flick, and ignore you.

This is not letting them know who’s boss. Not that I can really speak— I get up two or three times a night when hear Autumn’s ungainly thud on the floor and every time give her exactly what she wants.

But this is where I am taking the sports to a much higher level. I am using her own tactics against her; I play to her strengths— at least I believe it to be that way. If she wants love when it’s inhuman to expect it: I won’t play ball when she gets her ‘munching’ face on…

You must be cruel to be kind. Or in the case of felines in general— cruel to avoid having misery thrust upon you, since it is their main goal in life.

So just remember: cats are not your friends. Why do you think that they are not mentioned once in the bible? They are sharp and cunning— even the thick ones! So play the game by their rules and the two of you can live harmoniously,

If you give them an inch—

They’ll own you…

And they say there’s no rest for the wicked…

Just a little background: noise & biography…

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is right at their heels.

Bertolt Brecht

iuI read that and instinctly think cats. That’s biography.

I am fascinated by the heroic age of Antarctic expedition, history, education, great sex, openness, cats, cameras; the space race; sentence-structure, lexis, discourse conventions and phatic communication; cinema; the sounds of cricket and its numbers; golf swings, sortes, piropo, productivity, logical fallacies; fagottists— which leads to the double-o phoneme and coda-less syllables; falderals, nonsense; nanism— my fear of developing it and albino-clowns who already have. Ironing, long-sleeves, compound swearing, yellow pads, yoof-speak and linguistic representations— meh. Books, tea, science, feets, unnecessary plurals and corrugated-cardboard to name but a few.

It’s a pointless list because there isn’t much I’m not interested in. I like the feeling of insignificance in knowing how little I know; and how each little thing helps me know what I already know a little better.

And I still don’t know what this makes me, but it kind of works like this:

Perhaps it just makes me English since ‘England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity … hobbies and humors.’1 Quite whether the world thinks we are small or great, but such is the context of opinion. Goethe wrote that, ‘people of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.’ Well spheres be damned as, ‘No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity.’2 But to what end is thought’d: ‘eccentricity in small things [is] crazy’3 and though it ‘destroys reason, [it does] not [the] wit?’4

All I’m really trying to do here is to show a little of what it’s like to be autistic— from the ground up I’ve taken my traits and applied them to certain functions within the texts: from word orders and word types, semantic variances, repetitions and rhetorical devices— even archaic syntax to the very deliberate structure I use to present things. It’s not always easy to read and it’s not meant to be, It’s supposed to be a little overwhelming at times and take the reader in circles— but it’s a desirable difficulty designed to stimulate a little over-processing, in the same way real life does to me. It’s the only way I know how to present what it’s like to me: to demonstrate it, not write about it— especially when there are a million people out there able to just describe it so much better.

I was going to just post the blueprint, but thought the meta-language would just make it pointless— like the list…

I’m not just a linguist or educator or golfer or cricket fanatic or autistic or anything for that matter—

I’m just curious…

And I guess lists should be conspiculous by its absense, but it’s really not…

1 George Santayana
2 André Maurois
3 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
4 Nathaniel Emmons

Senses & Nonsenses…

One’s real life is so often the life one does not lead…

Oscar Wilde

IMG_0013Such are the senses, that we have more than five and fewer than six. Try tasting something without seeing it for instance; it almost always tastes like something other than what it’s supposed to and rarely anything other than chicken; listen to someone speak without seeing their mouths move or those unusual sounds that keep you awake at night when you’re trying to sleep that never turn out to be two thousand pound mice and you’ll forever be in that darkness— or even tasting something without smelling it and so on and so forth. Life is so much more than it appears to be, though it’s little more than it actually ever is. Unless of course, there is such a thing a two thousand pound mouse or you really were asked to shake and squeeze the band which gave King Tut its mildew…

My real life is far cry from the award winning, affluent, multi-faceted and admired jaunt and jolly through which my other self is no doubt enjoying somewhere where the senses are better understood and household pets and rodents are disproportionately large; but that’s not to say I’ll ever be to old to be everything I could have been-or too small for Autumn to call me sweetheart.

It puts me in mind somewhat rather of him— S; a splendid chap and so was his wife— K. At least she was when I knew her. She was smart too, in that sensible way that can get up the noses of people who try to sit down to quickly wearing tight pants, smoking whilst owning chest complaints and the intolerably foolish doing well, anything. She could and would point out the obvious with a style and punctuation, few of us would or could even dream about. I remember one such occasion at college, when she was trying to persuade S to disband one of his pro-radical movements— he liked to use meaningless compound phrases in those days— retro-activist-avist was his favourite— he said that it left dangling inferences suggesting guile and determination. K said it left an unpleasant odour in the air and a salty taste in her mouth whenever he said it. Her favourite saying on the other hand was, What’s with the finger E.T.? They were a charming bunch.

Anyway, he claimed the campus anti-everything lobby weren’t doing enough complaining about things that didn’t matter to anyone, so he founded the double A. E. B. The Anti-Anti-Everything Brigade, to which K merely pointed out that its tautology gave it ’all the noise of a harmless educational committee. Trying to point out the pointlessness of rebellion in the civilised world— is rather like an unwanted splinter’ she meant this quite literally; ‘a forgotten part of the Nation Union of Teachers perhaps’ she fancied, and besides, wasn’t it dishonest describing himself as a brigade, especially since he hadn‘t persuaded anyone else in actually joining him; that to disband an army of one was something that ‘reality just wouldn’t allow’ and perhaps he should try doing something useful instead like, drawing up a petition against himself and joining the N.U.T., ‘allergies allowing of course’, maintaining that she had read somewhere that ‘at least education had an ethos…’

S had missed the train again. It was the third time in as many days and he was starting to take the whole thing very personally. He wouldn’t have minded had it not been for the decrepit old fool in front of him who insisted on buying his ticket with an exact change he couldn’t really see; unless demonstrating the ability to distinguish the denomination of a coin by rubbing them against his eyeball counted as seeing.

As for me,I have a new cafeteria— reward for installing a utility next door, which brings me to my last point in a pointless exercise…

If you ask for and are expecting a cup of tea— but are given a mug of coffee instead…

It doesn’t taste well, and quite unlike either.

The purpose of Jasper & outwitting superstitious dining practices with sawdust…

I’m a firm believer that we make our own bad luck—

We can’t just have it the one way, surely— it’s just not democratic…

418838_10151214975596041_1406077767_nI like to think of the purpose of Jasper as a blessing; one of wonderment— and for those of you who find yourselves caught short at the dinner table; whether it be over-blessed with company, or under for that matter— a Jasper is a handy thing to have at hand, since no one would wish an unusual fatality to occur to someone you’d only just dined with.

There’s only one drawback, it’s fairly minor, to a point— but drawbacks by definition, does not plain-sailing make. Jasper is a stuffed cat; not the most ubiquitous of items I know. In fact I can safely say I’ve never had the fortune of observing; or the misfortune of having missed one being plucked from the bottom of a woman’s hand-bag instead of a lipstick. I’m sure however, that if I live long enough— it may just happen. I know enough to know that these are bottoms that do indeed hold some strange, strange stuff.

The story goes, that a hundred years or so— I’m not entirely sure when exactly but it’s usually a hundred years or so. Besides, if it wasn’t it should’ve been that a group of hungry people were due to meet for dinner at The Savoy, but one of the party members couldn’t make it, so naturally, as was the case a hundred years ago when everything was unexplainable and spooky: thirteen diners remained.

Now, with ‘thirteen’ being a number synonymous with bad luck even then— as if they didn’t have the monopoly on weird already, the last man to sit at the table was sure to became afflicted with doom of some kind; and this despite repeated warnings that congregating in such numbers was ‘not on’. Anyway, the gentlemen took his chair, the waiter told to ‘shoo’ no doubt flippantly at the same time assuring him that he was well aware of the risks and so on and so forth.

A couple of weeks later however, when word got back that the chap had died in the most bizarre of manners upon his return to South Africa, it was decided that for whatever the reasons: should a party of thirteen meet and dine together at The Savoy. Jasper, the stuffed cat, would take a seat and have a place set for him in the fourteenth chair…

Hemmingway was on the right track when he wrote—

The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

But he was more into his cats with-many-toes, and would no doubt have approved…